A Paradise for Fools

by Nicholas Kilmer

  Fred said, “So the divorce hadn’t gone through yet?”

  “Mr. Z didn’t talk to me about that,” Tippy said. “Well, maybe, I’d come in late, he’d be sitting here, the TV, the big glass of scotch and ice, he’d be wanting to talk. I let him talk, but I didn’t listen. Most of the time he didn’t listen either, what he was saying, he talked to himself. No. They’re not divorced yet. How is he going to pay for the lawyer? He’s already…”

  “But you can show me the painting?”

  “Arthur has it. I guess.”

  Provenance. Suppose the painting’s chain of title ever came up as an issue? “But Mr. Z did give it to you?” Fred reminded her.

  “It’s not like anybody cared about that old picture,” Tippy explained. “Z didn’t want it. Arthur’s the only one.”

  Fred poured black liquid over his ice cubes, studying the situation while he watched bubbles resolve into disintegrating foam. “Tippy, why don’t you, maybe not be here when Mrs. Z turns up, but leave her a short note, offer to watch the house until she sells it? The house is safer that way, tell her. She’ll see that you keep it nice.”

  “She hates all us girls,” Tippy said. “Hell, I would.”

  “Still, it might be worth a try. Times like these, the house standing empty could be for a year, Mrs. Z maybe out of state, the place, boys come by with rocks and break windows, people start stealing fixtures, even the copper pipes. It’s worth a try,” Fred said. “So, you gave the painting to Arthur.”

  Tippy said, “Picked it up at a yard sale probably. They were always bringing crap back from yard sales.”

  Fred said, “You and Arthur keep up?”

  “The thing. Arthur and me. We had a thing. Which I mentioned. And, but then, at the same time, I was having the same thing with Kenzo. You know him? Kenzo’s the reason why me and Arthur, when we got like that, didn’t want the rest of the whole world, and so we’d spend time here. Arthur didn’t have a place, like I said, and besides I had a car, Arthur didn’t. Drive, even. Had a bike. Like bicycle bike. Arthur never had money. He was at Kenzo’s all the time, we’d all graduated, but Kenzo doesn’t pay him? Me, for a while, Kenzo’s, I did reception but I didn’t want ink or, but, well, I finally hadda let him do something, I got the piercing maybe you noticed? My belly button? So the customer could see there wasn’t anything to be…And you could say me and Kenzo were sort of lovers although Kenzo was never…What I mean, with Kenzo, you haveta let Kenzo…”

  Fred said, “If you call Arthur and ask him, will he show me the painting you gave him? Is it like that? You gave it to Arthur?”

  “Like that, or maybe you’d say, like, Arthur’s keeping it for me. Who cares? Who’s going to make a stink?

  “When I asked Arthur about it,” Fred said, “he didn’t want to tell me anything. I was at his place, I asked, he said he didn’t have a clue what I was talking about.”

  “Arthur’s like that,” Tippy said. “The thing, what I realized, Kenzo’s too old for me. Gets mad like an old lady. He’s gotta be, what, your age? Arthur’s like me. What do you think? And besides, I’ll tell you what I think, it’s all, the whole thing, Mrs. Z.”

  “What’s all Mrs. Z? You’re losing me.”

  “This all of a sudden everyone wanting to know what happened to that picture. She must of found a place, wants to move in, she decides she wants her stuff, her half of everything or however they’re gonna work it, but all Mr. Z says is, ‘Whoever walks out, all bets are off.’ God Bless Our Home, the rest of it. The stinking couch. Who knows, by now maybe she can use the crib. She’s younger than him. Student he had a million years ago. Might not be too late for the crib, some other guy.”

  “Suddenly everyone wants to know?” Fred asked.

  “And, shit, I don’t care,” Tippy said. “I have what I want, and it’s alive. It’s part of me.” She rocked leftwards so as to pat the side of her right buttock, where colorful beetles, under the cover of her Bermuda shorts, continued to devour coins. “Sure, Kenzo wanted to know. He called me at the Moonglow—it’s not like we’re not speaking—I said, I don’t know where it is. I move so much. Kenzo knew I had it because he saw my tattoo, that Arthur did, which is where all the trouble started, between him and Arthur. Well, and me. How could Kenzo not see it, and like a fool I thought, well, I’ll…I’m not an idiot, I knew he was going to see it. It’s right there!…But I thought, maybe I wasn’t thinking. Kenzo being Arthur’s mentor, he wouldn’t mind. And wouldn’t maybe jump to any conclusions. But he did. And Arthur hadda leave town.

  “And that’s the story, how I lost my day job.”

  Tippy drained the can she was nursing.

  Fred said, “I’ll give you Arthur’s number. Would you call him? Tell him I’m on the up-and-up?”

  “Give me the number,” Tippy said. “I’ll think about it.” Fred roamed the room until he found a waste basket that contained an envelope from the telephone company. It was decorated with a fat red stripe. He wrote down Arthur’s number—then his own, at Clayton’s. Tippy had risen when Fred did. Fred handed the envelope over.

  “Mr. Z’s phone’s been disconnected, you can see,” Tippy said.

  Fred said, “I’ll take you to a place. I saw a 7-Eleven…”

  “I have to think first,” Tippy said. “Why everyone, all of a sudden…And my motto is, in life, don’t tell anyone anything. I mean, where Arthur is? That Kenzo suddenly wanted to know, or Z? Z started asking about it too, where Arthur was and all. Forget it. I didn’t know and whatever he told me his plan was, that’s my business. I didn’t know anyway. Where Arthur was. What you want I don’t know.”

  Fred said, “I want to see the rest of the picture. Beyond the part of it that’s on you, which I like a lot.”

  Tippy said, “Mrs. Z will maybe say, she gets around to wanting all her stuff, if she remembers it, it’s hers. Which my guess is, why did Kenzo all of a sudden start wondering about it? Well, shit! I’d like to see her try to take this back.” She paused.

  “Look, Fred. You say you’re on the up-de-up. Maybe. You’re nice. I like you. Thanks for the ride. If you’re working for her maybe she’s not such a bitch, I don’t know. There’s only one thing I’ve learned, that I know, and which I have learned from practically everyone. Don’t trust anybody.

  “So, thanks for the ride.”

  She moved toward the hallway that would convey him through the kitchen and into the exterior darkness. Fred’s undeniable function was to follow her.

  “I guess Arthur and Ruthie Hardin are a thing now,” Fred tried.

  Tippy shrugged. “Arthur’s in space half the time,” she said. “The rest of the time he’s out beyond it.”

  “Arthur’s so afraid of Kenzo Petersen that he had to leave town?”

  “Kenzo throws stuff and screams things like, ‘I’ll kill that sneaky son of a bitch.’ Kenzo’s sweet. Most of the time. He’s into Zen. But he fired me, and he said he was gonna kill Arthur, and Arthur didn’t want to hang around and find out. What Kenzo would do.”

  “So Arthur took off,” Fred said. “What I mean, he left you.”

  “He had a ride. Maybe the bus.”

  “With the painting?” Fred pressed.

  “I have had it with this painting,” Tippy said. “Thanks for the ride.”

  “If you can call Arthur, I’d appreciate it,” Fred said.

  Tippy saw him out.

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Fred parked in front of the G Spot. Three-thirty in the morning, it was shuttered closed. He’d be all right here, at the meter, until eight.

  Kim opened the door to his knock, saying, “Flash?” before she saw who it was. She was wearing Arthur’s yellow Random Law shirt. It was big on her. “Where’s Arthur?” she said. Her long white-blonde hair was too straight to get tousled by sleep, but she’d been slee
ping. She stood in the doorway, uncertain.

  “I might as well come in,” Fred said.

  Kim stepped aside.

  “You’re looking for that painting,” she said. “It’s not here. Arthur’s not…”

  The place, at a quick glance, was as Fred had last seen it.

  Kim said, “Arthur’s a baby. One time…he’s a genius is the trouble. The kind of genius, I saw a program. They call it something French. Enfant terrible. No. That isn’t it. It’s French but it’s not…It’s…”

  “Idiot savant,” Fred said.

  “No. Not Idiot souvent. Not…Where they’re too fucking innocent to live but they can tell you all the dates in the history of the world, but backwards, and what happened, and add them together and understand why, but they can’t decide what they want for breakfast? He can’t take care of himself. One time…well, I thought, I’ll ask Sammy Flash, the old guy that hangs out in the hallway, but he’s gone. Like that. So Arthur’s with Sammy. Is my guess. But Arthur wouldn’t go anywhere with Flash. Who would? Flash wouldn’t go anywhere with Flash either, except what can he do? He can’t help it.”

  “You say you’re worried?”

  “Sure. Mr. Z being dead. Killed, you could say. This commotion about the painting nobody ever used to give a fart and a half for. You suddenly turning up is part of it, too, and running around everywhere and it’s because of you I heard about Mr. Z. Wouldn’t you? Be worried? And who’s this Lexington Orono? If ever I heard a made-up name! It’s like two fancy cars in a head-on. Lexington Orono!”

  Kim turned to the table where Arthur kept his tools and picked up the folded sheet from the notepad of the Charles Hotel. “You know so much,” she said, “Who is this so-called Lexington Orono?”

  “Show me.” Fred held his hand out for the note. A large, thick, hearty cursive designed for short notes: Arthur on one side; on the other, Arthur, my business with you is worth $$. Talk to me first. I am at the Charles. Ask at the desk. Lexington Orono.

  Fred said, “You found the note on the table?”

  “No. Like it was shoved under the door, I stepped in.”

  Then Arthur hadn’t seen it. Arthur hadn’t been here since Fred left.

  Kim said, studying the note, “What has me worried, the people Arthur works with, does pieces for, no way would one of them stay at the Charles.”

  Fred walked them over to the card table in the kitchen area that served Arthur’s dining needs. A couple of metal folding chairs there. He pulled one out and sat. “In case I can help,” he said. “And leave the painting out of it, OK? Let’s say it doesn’t matter. And a painting doesn’t matter when you stack it up against—let’s say, for the sake of argument—what happened to Mr. Z. That’s what you are worried about, yes?”

  Kim said, “I didn’t want to be alone.”

  “Who does?”

  Kim sat in the other chair, giving a little shiver as she did so. Kim sitting across from him was like having an illuminated medieval manuscript transformed into living flesh, simultaneously, by both the good and the malignant godfairies. The miniature figures moved in their youthful, compact, swirling world.

  “Tell me about Sammy Flash,” Fred suggested. “First you thought Arthur must have gone somewhere with him. Then you assumed, when I knocked at the door, I must be Flash. Flash has keys, I happen to know. But it looks as if…”

  “He’s one of the old timers,” Kim said. “You think Kenzo’s an old timer until you see Flash, so old he could be a black-and-white movie. Even before talkies. God, if only. Flash will not shut up. You’ve run into Flash, you know. If you’ve got time, you start at one end of the string that comes out of his mouth, while it snarls and tangles and loops and braids and kinks, and it’s caught up in the trees, before you come to the other end of it. All I can tell you is, if you have the time to wait and find out what he’s trying to say, you’ve got more time to waste than I do. You can have that for free.”

  “Kenzo kept Flash around,” Fred said. “In the old days, in Nashua. Why?”

  “Kenzo would do the Asian stuff, and the bikers, and the hot chicks, which there are not as many of them as you think, you look at the magazines. We, some of us from Central High, Arthur, liked hanging around out front. Flash was just this old guy, like he was a big shady tree, you thought—gee, this is the real world, what it’s like. History. Flash has his own line too, stuff he’ll do, cartoons he likes especially, antiques. Betty Boop he calls one girl used to be popular you probably never even heard of, so long ago, boobs, some of the guys like, retro.

  “So partly Kenzo took pity on the guy, partly he could use him, and partly—he didn’t want to keep a dog—he let Flash sleep nights in the shop, to guard it and then Flash has a place to sleep so it works out. Flash drinks, though. And also, well, him and Kenzo go way back, and these guys stick together. Flash kept the people entertained, they waited.”

  “With Tippy at the reception desk,” Fred said.

  “For a while, but she didn’t fit in, and anyway…shit! You know a lot all of a sudden! But what I’m saying, then Kenzo got pissed at Flash. There was too much missing.”

  “Tippy?”

  “Tippy? What was there in that place Tippy would want? Hell, no. Kenzo took the cash with him, no point leaving that overnight, and what else is there? No, what Kenzo started missing—needles, ink, the odd tattooing machine, even lights. So first thing, you look at the bum who drinks, and Flash is it. Kenzo threw him out.”

  She paused and explained, “This is around when Arthur left. You know Tippy?”

  “Not really.”

  “What am I supposed to do about Lexington Orono?” Kim demanded.

  “What are you thinking?” Fred asked. “I mean to say, what are the choices?”

  “The man says, Lexington, there’s money in it for Arthur. Arthur doesn’t know, and I can’t find him to tell him, and if the guy is the same as everyone else in the world who stays in a hotel, he’s not there for long. Next thing you know he’s somewhere else, and you don’t know where that is.”

  “I see what you mean,” Fred said. “Meanwhile, there’s a woman working at Kenzo’s now, from down south. Stephanie. You know her?”

  Kim shook her head. “Arthur and me, we left Nashua pretty much at the same time. Well, you could say, the same car. See, Arthur not driving, and he needed to get out fast, and I was ready too, have a look at the world. You don’t know, you live in Nashua, New Hampshire, how big the world can be. Tippy, by that time…”

  “She was with Arthur, no?” Fred said.

  “But she wouldn’t leave town,” Kim said. “And she wouldn’t go farther than she had. With Arthur. The thing on her butt was it. She loved it, but that was it, she said. Anyway she had the gig with the Moonglow, dancing regular, and a room with Mr. Z. She was set pretty much for life, she wanted.

  “Meanwhile, that painting Arthur had, the one Tippy had a little part of on her butt, the bugs—that painting, the whole thing, when I saw it I knew it—that was me!”

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Fred said, “I’m slow. Listen, when Arthur gets home, if he finds the two of us here, you being not exactly dressed, and us so comfortable, informal together, is that a problem?”

  Kim laughed, then added, “No offense, Fred. Anyhow, Arthur’s not that way.”

  “I’m keeping you up,” Fred said. “As long as we’re waiting for Arthur—and I’m thinking about your question, what should you do about Lexington Orono?—but I don’t have an answer. Something puzzles me. I don’t have a perfect memory for people’s faces, but I’m pretty good remembering what they say, and you were talking to Claire in the shop. You remember? A couple days back. I was there, Claire was cutting my hair.”

  “Sure. I remember. I embarrassed myself. And you didn’t take advantage of that. Or me. Not yet anyway. And it�
��s too late. Say anything about it now, Tampa’s not going to believe…”

  “What you said, talking to Claire,” Fred said. “I can quote exactly, because I was interested, and I thought about it, you were talking about ‘...the last thing he started, we call it a gremlin, like an egg with two heads and chicken feet…’ in the middle of your back, you said, ‘ My idea’ (That’s you.)…‘first time I went in there, because I’d lost touch with him until I happened…I wanted a pirate ship full of the pirates, the flags, the maidens. Parrot screaming. Guns, sabers…’ and so on; and then, ‘But then I saw what he had kicking around there, like a dirty old wooden painting, and he and I fell in love at the same time. With the idea.’”

  “You even make me sort of sound like me,” Kim said. “Except I would never say ‘maidens.’”

  “How big is the painting?” Fred asked.

  “About yay by yay,” Kim said. She stretched her hands and arms to something like three feet by two and a half. The gesture stretched and distorted the yellow T- shirt and its motto, Random Law.

  “On wood,” Fred said. “Dirty.”

  “That’s what I said. So I guess it’s true.”

  Fred said, “From what you said to Claire, you never saw the painting until you saw it here in Arthur’s place, in Cambridge, when you happened to bump into him again, after you hadn’t seen him for a while.”

  “Claire’s not like a friend,” Kim said, as if this observation satisfied the contradiction. “The thing about this painting you keep talking about, in spite of you said you weren’t going to. I never saw it.”

  “What you said to Claire…”

  “So sue me. You know how, it’s the social contract. You tell people what they’re waiting to hear. What Claire needs, she needs to get away from her mother. Out of the house. She’s a big girl, earning good enough money, have her own place, have her own life. She goes home, they’re always on her about something, now she’s supposed to give them something for her room? Rent? So what she needs, she gets ink where they can see it, people like that, they are gonna throw her out.